>it doesn’t mean we should dismiss outright the possibility that a passing era might just be taking something truly valuable with it.
Our youth is usually the part we're nostalgic for and nothing else. You ever hear the nostalgists crying out to go back to a "simpler time"? It's because they were children and the world is simpler for a child that lacks obligations. Fortunately, my childhood was crappy enough and my adulthood fun enough that I can more than let go of the 80s and 90s without any reservations.
That said, I do wonder if times really were simpler back then - in the sense of the way people thought.
Movies seem to be simpler back then. Watched Sleepless in Seattle a while back. I heard it was very popular back in the day. Well … I’m not that impressed, sorry to say. The plot is very simple and a little weird when viewed using today’s social mores. Direction and pacing is adequate. Or maybe I just don’t get it.
I think “things got more complicated” as “information velocity” increased, first with newspapers, then the radio, then TV, and finally the internet - the internet can even be broken down into before ubiquitous social media, before internet video became “trivial”, …
Movies maybe. We are in the golden age of TV, at least. Thanks to streaming and 'binge watching' creators feel a lot more comfortable with putting up shows with more complicated continuity, instead of independent episodes, than they used to.
As far as I can tell, books haven't really gotten more (or less) complicated in at least the past 200 years. Or rather: you might be able to detect some trends with a statistical analysis, but the variance is big enough that as a casual reader, you won't notice a trend.
It's also whatever is removed in time because people simply forgot about it.
It's a constant discourse in my country to think of today as "dangerous" and idealize some earlier decades where you'd "leave the door open" while by all metrics crime was actually higher.
We just collectively forgot about it.
That's one of the reasons every age and culture has a golden age/arcadia/Eden mythology.
>It's a constant discourse in my country to think of today as "dangerous" and idealize some earlier decades where you'd "leave the door open" while by all metrics crime was actually higher.
This highlights a great point about past media. Films like The Warriors, Class of 1999, and even A Clockwork Orange play into this notion that juveniles have become worse and worse and we can expect a hellscape from future generations of young people.
Truth, though, is that Gen Zs are so laughably well behaved compared to those my age were that we finally have a period where this genre simply has no place. I hear things from my nephews and nieces about "staying home for the weekend" and think of all the money my sister wasted on a home security system to make sure they don't sneak out and get arrested all the time like we did. Leave that door wide open with soundproofing and they still have no desire to sneak out, especially because nobody else their age is out anyway.
I doubt it's about last century media, "youth have no respect these days" goes literally back to before Christ, we have ancient Greek texts that say this, and probably older still.
I do agree kids _seem_ to be more risk-averse these days.
I'm not saying it doesn't go back far. I'm saying that every generation says it, while media promotes it, and we've come to a crossroads where the current young generation has become so laughably well behaved compared to my generation that even a biased and nostalgic perspective can't sustain the myth of the forever worsening youth.
The news also plays a big role in this. If (in a given city/area) crime happens every day, it’s just business as usual, so nobody bothers to report on it. However, if crime happens once a year, it’s headline news.
Our youth is usually the part we're nostalgic for and nothing else. You ever hear the nostalgists crying out to go back to a "simpler time"? It's because they were children and the world is simpler for a child that lacks obligations. Fortunately, my childhood was crappy enough and my adulthood fun enough that I can more than let go of the 80s and 90s without any reservations.